I worked for a year without a day off. And I liked it
Work is about constantly attempting to sell one’s time for a more favorable price. Someone is crazy about their work, whereas others picture themselves slamming their boss’s door and settling down in a neighboring office. Regardless of our attitude to work, all of us take breaks and chill out at the weekends. I took a decision to say “no” to rest and kept working in this mode for 12 months. Let me share with you my experience.
There are examples galore of people being nuts about having a rest. First off, these are colleagues who can’t make themselves work on Monday mornings, looking for excuses to put important tasks off. Here is what the investor and founder of Angel List, Naval Ravikant, said in Joe Rogan’s recent podcast.
As a modern knowledge-worker athlete, as an intellectual athlete you want to function like an athlete, which means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest. You reassessed, got your feedback loop, then you train some more, then you sprint again. Then you rest, then you reassess.
This idea that you gonna have linear output just by cranking every day at some amount of time — that’s machines. Machines should be working 9 to 5. Humans are not meant to work 9 to 5.
So, can human beings overstep the fixed boundaries and get closer to working as machines? You bet they can!
How it all began
Yay me! I got a position of chief editor of a resource writing about cryptocurrencies. That happened back in May 2018. My salary increased, which also meant much more responsibility. From then on I was supposed to not only write news, I had also to control every little thing happening on or otherwise related to our website.
My responsibilities implied tasking my colleagues, checking their performance, preparing texts to be published, drafting plans for articles and managing accounts on social networks. Apart from that, I was in charge of monitoring the site’s statistics and getting a deeper understanding of those topics that might prove interesting to readers.
Most importantly, I had to get as much information as I could on what was going on inside the market. Was a major cryptocurrency exchange platform hacked? If so, I needed to cover the story as soon as possible. Can the fork of a cryptocurrency provide users with new coins and an opportunity to capitalize on it? Perfect! Our readers deserved to learn about it. This list of questions could go on and on.
What my regular day looked like
I worked remotely. I did not sit in the office. Basically, my office was any place from where I could connect my laptop or tablet to the internet, much like a cab, a train or anything of the kind. Last time I checked, you can use mobile internet on an iPhone.
My working day started right in my bed due to my bad habit of unblocking a smartphone that could also perform functions of an alarm clock. I would get dozens of messages from the top of my iPhone screen, including the ones related to work. My brain was getting warmed up, and my treacherous finger would press the Twitter-icon. I was about to catch up with hundreds of night tweets.
The most important thing here is to lay new information out in an intelligible way and share it through all our accounts on social networks.
The whole ritual lasted for some twenty minutes. I would then head to the bathroom, brush my teeth and have breakfast.
Someday I will give up on a habit of checking my phone upon waking, I promise.
The main working session would start after breakfast with a glass of tea on the table. You would know the session was getting started by this recognizable sound of a MacBook being switched on.
First I looked through 15–20 websites dealing with cryptocurrencies. I needed to select the most relevant articles and forward them to authors. Then I checked the already written publications to be approved. Normally, these were publications that had been done either the evening before or at night. By checking I mean reading them carefully, correcting mistakes if any and licking them into shape. Should a phrase not sound well, I had to alter it.
Urgent articles were done quickly. The rest would automatically be published at the time set in advance.
It was a bit too early to feel complacent after you published an article. Since your website has its own community, you’d better inform its members of the publication on social networks. In other words, you share a link, insert a picture and write a caption text that would attract a potential subscriber and make him or her click on the link. A caption, a picture and a link — that’s a kind of combination your subscribers will see on Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and VK.
You may schedule publications on social networks for any time you want. It is crucial to keep a watchful eye on their timely appearance on the website. At times scheduled posts might not be published automatically, which leads to users clicking on the link and being redirected to the “404” error. You don’t want that to happen, which is why it is important to keep track of these things.
My next step was to draft a detailed plan of publications on social networks. I would make sure they did not consist of solely articles that also appeared on our website. There were lots of formats: mini-notes, links to updates of crypto wallets and miners, opinions of leaders in the industry, etc. Jokes and funny gifs also did the trick.
All this was followed by the most enjoyable break. Authors were busy writing articles, the plan for articles and their publication had been approved. It was about time to immerse myself into yet another important ritual, namely that of brewing coffee.
Coffee is an integral part of life, which I am absolutely mad about. I brew coffee manually. I’ve got a v60 brewer and an aeropress. The process of preparing coffee requires concentration and will keep you satisfied at every stage — starting with weighing the beans and grinding them to rotating the prepared drink in a coffee server. While being fully absorbed in the ritual, my mind is free from any work related issues. These are my ten minutes of no connection whatsoever to the external world.
A cup of coffee is being transferred to the vicinity of my MacBook. A new stage is on. It was me who was supposed to get to writing: usually these were SEO-articles, reviews, product comparison, description of new tags and a few small experiments on how you can make money out of cryptocurrencies.
Tasks differed a lot, so I was definitely not bored to death. Well, if that did happen, it wouldn’t last long. Since all I needed was my MacBook or an iPad and a Wi-Fi network, I would drop by a café nearby from where I could work. By the way, I was by no means disturbed by music or visitors. Actually, I’d gotten used to them during all this time.
What’s next?
Let the loop repeat itself. When authors were done with their new articles, I had to proofread and publish them. As soon as a piece of news arrived, it had to be shared on social networks. Meanwhile I was writing articles. Then I proofread those written by others and completed a few more tasks on social networks. Next thing you know, it was evening.
Normally I knocked off at 8–9 p.m. Very rarely did I work till 10–11 p.m. It was back in high school that I used to burn the midnight oil. These times were gone.
Saturdays and Sundays
At the weekend there was less work, but it was work nonetheless. Let me give you an example — every Sunday we published a regular section containing key takeaways of the past week — as a rule, writing such an article would take me one hour. In addition, I needed to supervise my colleagues as well as remember to post news on social networks and keep myself in the picture of everything going on.
When do you rest?
There are plenty of tasks. In theory, you may work from dusk till dawn without taking any breaks. Luckily, I’ve learned how to fit breaks in a cramped schedule.
On weekdays I hit the gym. Normally I work out in the morning, just in time for a cup of coffee. When there is no gym on my agenda, I am more likely to visit a café and work from there.
I can meet friends, of course. However, there are 2 rules I stick to before going out for a small rendezvous. First, it has to be in the evening. Second, I have to get really much work done before hanging out; all of the articles should be scheduled so that I can spend time working exclusively on social networks.
Normally at the weekend I find some time to turn over the pages of a book for a while in a café or to run 10 kilometers. In the evenings during a week I have enough time to read, take care of my private matters as well as write an article for Medium. When writing these lines, I am sitting in the very same café and my watch shows 8:29 p.m.
Now what? I don’t need to take vacation?
My task is to make sure that well checked articles appear on our website and readers can learn about news in the industry from our accounts on social network. Nobody is particularly interested in how I manage this, or from where I manage this.
That’s why theoretically every day may both be a working day and a day off. The main thing here is your will.
Last March I took a flight abroad as a chief editor for the very first time. To do this I had to get up at the crack of dawn, work really hard and schedule publications in advance. Even though I headed off to the airport at 5 p.m., the usual workflow of the website was not affected. Readers did not suspect anything.
For the record, in Barcelona’s subway someone stole my iPhone for just 30 seconds. It was cool. I mentioned this incident in my previous article.
Do I get tired of the fast lane?
In general I’ve gotten used to it. It’s not that bad. I was rough time, though, when we were recruiting new staff members. Each candidate submitted one article in the course of the day, which had to be proofread, published and given feedback to. There were lots of applicants publishing several articles within one hour. All this time I was sitting in front of my computer, observing the process.
Now things have gotten easier. I have managed to strike a balance between effective work and short breaks. As a result, I get the feeling of complete tiredness no more than 2–3 times a week. I feel quite alright for the rest of time.
Where do I draw strength from? What gets me inspired?
You are most motivated to keep working once you see the result of your efforts. It gives you satisfaction to see hundreds of thousands of views every month. It’s nice to realize that your jokingly written post was well accepted and shared by hundreds of readers. It’s cool to see your articles educating other people and initiating discussions.
I feel like I am a conductor — readers can’t see my face, which does not prevent a harmonious flow of music. At the same time the orchestra is doing exactly what it is told to.
The laziest day
The year with no days off might not have happened: my plans could have been thwarted by the first day of the New Year. The entire country was having a rest on this day, so my colleagues had a full day off. There was nothing to write about, nor did I have anything to check.
In the end, I posted a few things on social networks. Technically, I did fulfil a few tasks on that day. I also took a stroll twice and managed to catch up with some podcast stories.
I was feeling weird, as though the entire world was no longer in need of new portions of information. Suddenly I felt like I was not needed any more.
Is it worth it?
While writing this article, I was approached by a barista I knew. Since he worked shifts and according to the schedule, I was eager to know his opinion as of an outsider. “What would you ask someone who has been working through the entire year without a day off?” That was my question. I liked his reply.
Was it worth it?
This wording seems way too rough to me. It implies that I have sacrificed something, for example, my free time, my weekends, company of friends, travels and my happy life in general.
This is not true. In reality, I do have less spare time. However, it’s not something I have sacrificed. I view a person’s activity from a different angle, which means I have a different estimation of acceptable workload during the day. I don’t need to be sitting in front of a TV set on Sunday night in order to restore my work capacity for the next week. The same goes for weekend mornings. There is no need to sleep before lunchtime. I’ve readjusted to a new rhythm and am ready to work at any time.
To be continued?
The website continues its development. I am still part of this process. There is no reason why I should stop doing that: there are lots of ideas for new articles and much capacity for their realization. I hope I will keep maintaining the balance between work and respites so that I can keep working with the same spirit for another couple of years.
When the race is over, a weird Saturday will come. The Saturday on which I won’t have to switch on my laptop and catch up with new tweets. The Saturday on which I will take a flight abroad without any need to control the timely publication of articles on the website while sitting in the airport. The Saturday on which the process of reading a book will not take place during short breaks between work, with my sleeping time extending for a few more hours.
This Saturday will surely come. Meanwhile, it has to be deserved, which I am currently working on.
